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Where am I?:^mistymornings-->Cycletouring-->2009-->Summer.-->Day 14

Day 14-3. Larvik via Helgeroa to Gåsodden Camping contd.

The ever helpful gentleman also confirmed that there was nothing he could do for us, that there was no way for us to be able to use our cards in Helgeroa. It was no use trying to argue with an employee of a Dutch bank on the matter, definitely a bad idea to utter the word "compensation". Customer service was not seen as a strong selling point in the Dutch business world, rather as an unnecessary cost. What made this example of bad Dutch customer service more galling than usual was that we, together with all the other Dutch tax payers had baled out the ING bank at the beginning of 2009 when its considerable investments in sub-prime financial instruments had turned sour. Once again we were suffering from business decisions made inside the same bank. Once again they had no solutions to our problems.

I hung up and we looked at each other. Damae had understood the gist of the conversation and I filled her in with the details. Ho hum, what were we going to do? We didn't want to go all the way back to Larvik, there was no guarantee that we'd find a cash machine that did recognise our cards and that would add more than thirty kilometres to our trip.

As we stood there, considering our predicament in the lovely, cool summer evening air, I suddenly became aware that it was in fact a lovely, cool summer evening. Given that the roads were quiet at this time of day and given that we both felt quite fresh and that we had to cycle to Porsgrunn anyway, might it not be a good idea to cycle up to Porsgrunn along the main road this evening? It was the biggest town after Larvik, and would surely have an ING friendly cash machine. The main advantage of this plan is that it would get us further along in the right direction, even if we were not able to take out any money. We had enough food so all we would need would be a place to pitch the tent. On checking the map (Porsgrunn being the starting point of National Cycle Route 2) it looked like there was a campsite ten kilometres north of Porsgrunn which must be do-able we thought. That is if we could get our hands on some Norwegian Crowns.

We pondered for just a few seconds and decided to go for it. The road up to Porsgrunn was one of two NSCR routes between Helgeroa and Langesund. In 2005 it still formed part of the main East West E18 route and the main road had been described as extremely busy, so we'd chosen to take the route with a small ferry between Lagesund and Helgeroa. It would be interesting to be able to tick off another part of the Norwegian NSCR and too see the 'corkscrew' section which had been described as "unpleasant" in an old Dutch pamphlet about the NSCR in Norway.

Now that we had a plan we set off with renewed vigour although we had to stop to put on an extra layer of clothing almost immediately before setting off again. Not long after that we stopped and put on some extra battery lights to our rear panniers. Damae's rear dynamo light seemed a bit dicky and a couple of cars had come just a little too close for comfort. I figured more is better when it comes to being visible to other road users. As Sod's Law would have it, once we had made ourselves more visible we had no more problems with traffic as we climbed and wound our way across country towards Porsgrunn. At Langangen we dropped down to the inlet, and the road curved round the end of it. High above us was the new E18, the hiss and roar of traffic floating down to disturb the quiet summer evening. Still it was better than fighting for a space on the road amongst all that traffic.

Just after Langangen we encountered the corkscrew and stopped to take a look. I'd been expecting something like the helical San Gotthard railway tunnel, but this turned out to be a single loop with the road curving back over itself along a short curved bridge. I can imagine it would not have been much fun when all the East West traffic took this road, but I am not sure it would have been that bad.

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